Arts & Culture

Jews Watching Mad Men: The Joanie Effect & The Draper Effect

This week’s installment introduced us to some unavoidable laws of existence in the show’s world. It also presented us with one of our favorite things to watch in the world of Mad Men: unabashed drunkenness. Most excitingly, our first prediction … Read More

This week’s installment introduced us to some unavoidable laws of existence in the show’s world. It also presented us with one of our favorite things to watch in the world of Mad Men: unabashed drunkenness. Most excitingly, our first prediction came true.

This week’s Mad Men began with the Rockwell-esque image of stirrups being retracted and Joanie Holloway unassuming the position at her Gynecologist’s.

What do we find out? Joanie had two abortions! Call me sick, but this information does nothing but add to Joanie’s sexual appeal. Unlike Peggy, Joanie is a woman who takes charge, and instead of having a baby and making her mom raise the thing while keeping it a secret from everyone else in her life, Joanie hires an unqualified midwife to take care of the problem. Perhaps it’s just a law of Mad Men physics that there is nothing we could learn about Joanie that wouldn’t make her more sexy. Lets give it a try

Joanie once won a hot dog eating contest, slamming down thirty Oscar Meyer’s before eventually throwing up. Result: SEXIER!

Joanie stopped shaving all of her body hair for an entire year in protest of the war. Result: SEXIER!

Joanie went through a phase where she only slept with very short, very hairy men. Result: MUCH MUCH SEXIER!

It’s the Joanie effect and it might even carry over into real life. Check out any of the nerdy news aggregator sites like DIGG or Reddit, almost weekly one of the top stories is a bout Christina Hendricks in some capacity. Last week it was a video of an interview, during which the anchor completely looses all composure as he gets lost in her cavernous breasts.

So who cares that Joanie had two abortions? The real question is, will her semi-abusive Vietnam-bound husband find out?

The other law of Mad Men Physics we were introduced to this week was what we’ll refer to as, "The Draper Effect."

The Draper Effect: Whenever an attractive woman walks into a shot at any point during Mad Men, the viewer will have the same uniform reaction. Not unlike a twelve year old watching his first porn, the viewer will think, "He’s going to do her." This happened when Don went to LA to visit his fake ex wife, or rather the actual wife of the man who died and had his identity stolen by Dick Whitman, the man we now know as Don…If you don’t watch the show, your not going to get it. Anyway, as soon as her young niece, Stephanie walks into the room and we see her freckled skin and California sun-streaked hair; The Draper Effect kicks into gear. The three of them have a night of drinking and dancing, they chat about the kids at Berkeley who are refusing to go to class as a form of protest, and eventually Don, drives the pretty niece home. But, just as Don is about to make his move, the niece informs him that Anna has bone cancer.

Back in New York, and bummed about Anna’s cancer, Don invites Lane our for a drunken debauched night of stand up comedy, prostitutes, and slapping steaks on their crotches. In this scene we learn that British men feel much more comfortable with the idea of banging prostitutes, if they think that said prostitute attended a decent college, like Barnard. The logic behind this seems iffy, but it is probably true that prostitutes who attended Rutgers are best left alone.

Finally, our first Mad Men prediction came true this week. It was only last week that we speculated on when they would mention Bob Dylan. As if the producers of the show read "Jews Watching Mad Men," who gets mentioned this week? Robert Zimmerman himself. Is it so far fetched that Mathew Weiner, executive producer of Mad Men would read Jewcy? I don’t think so. Please Mathew, if you’re reading this, leave a comment below. Hopefully we haven’t heard the last Dylan reference on this show. Mad Men is as exciting as it’s ever been because the era that we’ve reached, is one of the most eventful in American history. As we learned this week, some things on Mad Men are absolute, like Joan’s sex appeal, but others aren’t. Strong as the Draper effect is, Bone Cancer is a powerful cockblock. Really, there’s no telling what will happen in the episodes to come. This episode ended on New Years Day 1965 and the times they are a changing.